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Chapter 55
Of the Monstrous
Pictures of Whales.
shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without
I anvas, something like the true form of the whale as he
c
actually appears to the eye of the whaleman when in his own
absolute body the whale is moored alongside the whale-ship
so that he can be fairly stepped upon there. It may be worth
while, therefore, previously to advert to those curious imag-
inary portraits of him which even down to the present day
confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to
set the world right in this matter, by proving such pictures
of the whale all wrong.
It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial de-
lusions will be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian,
and Grecian sculptures. For ever since those inventive but
unscrupulous times when on the marble panellings of tem-
ples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields, medallions,
cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of chain-
armor like Saladin’s, and a helmeted head like St. George’s;
ever since then has something of the same sort of license
prevailed, not only in most popular pictures of the whale,
but in many scientific presentations of him.
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